Dr. Klaas Stutje

Klaas Stutje is a senior researcher with three interconnected areas of interest: colonial museum collections and restitution, imprisonment and exile in the Dutch colonial empire, and the political history of Indonesia. Stutje is affiliated with NIOD’s Expert Centre Restitution, where he is involved in research on the expropriation of cultural property as a result of the Nazi regime and colonialism, and on the role of provenance research in restitution applications and policy. He is also coordinating an NWO-funded pilot project entitled: Empire of Exiles: Analysing Banishment in the Dutch Colonial Empire, 1800-1950.

With regard to colonial collections, until March 2022 Stutje was involved in the Pilot Project Provenance Research on Objects of the Colonial Era (PPROCE), which led to the publication of methodological recommendations for research in this area. Since 2023, he has been the contact point at NIOD for the Colonial Collections Consortium, for which NIOD supervised a fellowship programme and produced a large series of research guides. He was also involved in restitution research for the Committee Colonial Collections. Recent publication: ‘Whose Gold is This? Challenging Exclusion in Restitution, Towards a Social Analysis of Provenance’ (2025).

With regard to imprisonment and exile in the Dutch colonial empire, between 2016 and 2019 Stutje was a postdoctoral researcher at the IISH, working on a project on labour camps and prison labour in colonial Indonesia. The results included an article on the prison island of Nusakambangan in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (Vol. 53, 1-2, 2022), translated into Indonesian as: ‘Nusakambangan luar dalam’ (TandaBaca 2025). From September 2026, Stutje will lead the above-mentioned NWO pilot project on the long history of political detention, deportation and exile of local elites in the Dutch colonial empire.

With regard to the political history of Indonesia, between 2011 and 2016 Stutje undertook doctoral research at the University of Amsterdam on the history of Indonesian nationalism and anti-colonialism, with a particular focus on the international network of young Indonesian activists in Europe. This resulted in various publications, including the book Campaigning in Europe for a Free Indonesia, published by NIAS Press in 2019, and translated by Marijn Kiri into Indonesian in 2026 as: Di Balik Bendera Persatuan. In 2026, Stutje co-edited an edited volume on the history of Indonesian left-wing movements.

See Stutje’s personal website for a more detailed overview of his publications.